


If Wishes Were Horses

by chaletian



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Angst, Episode: s03e18 Riddled, Father-Son Relationship, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-13
Updated: 2014-02-13
Packaged: 2018-01-12 05:54:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 789
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1182681
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chaletian/pseuds/chaletian
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>[Set during 3x18] </p><p>John Stilinski has never looked at other boys, at other men’s sons, and wished one of them was his instead.</p>
            </blockquote>





	If Wishes Were Horses

John Stilinski has never looked at other boys, at other men’s sons, and wished one of them was his instead.

Stiles was never a placid baby, never a quiet kid, never a laid-back teenager. He’s always been eager, inquisitive… and, yeah, maybe a little troublesome. He’s a good boy. He’s always been a good boy. John’s never seen that unpleasantness in his own son that he’s seen a few times too many in the course of his career. He’s never worried about neighbours’ dead pets, put it that way. But Stiles hasn’t always been easy to manage. Claudia dying – well, that had made it easier and harder at the same time. For a while there, Stiles had been almost well-behaved, but it had gone hand in hand with panic attacks and an eerie blank look that didn’t settle right on Stiles’ face, and John was nothing but relieved the first time after Claudia’s death that he found Stiles sneaking out to cause mayhem with Scott McCall.

Anyway, the way John sees it, a little bit of mischief, a little bit of trouble – that’s a good thing in a growing boy. Stiles needs to stretch his boundaries, to explore his world. Would John prefer that Stiles’ world contained fewer detentions and werewolves? Yes he would. But he can’t live his son’s life for him, and he can respect the choices that Stiles has made. Particularly now that he knows it’s werewolves and not drugs and cults and weird-ass murder pacts which, he won’t lie, was a concern at one point.

Stiles drives him crazy. He can barely open his mouth without lying and even when he’s not doing that, he’s got information omission down to a fine art. He’s struggled with ADHD since he was little and his school performance has never been consistent, his grades vacillating between brilliant and (sophomore year Chemistry) abysmal. One day John will feel like he’s talking to an adult; the next, to a ten-year old. Stiles is- well, it doesn’t matter. Stiles is Stiles. He is John and Claudia’s son. John’s loved him since the day he was born, and that’s never going to stop.

He’s never – really, seriously – wished that Stiles was anything other than what he is. This is what he wishes were different: John wishes he didn’t have to worry. Was Stiles eating right? Were his grades OK? Have he and Scott tumbled into a drug-ring run by murder suspect Derek Hale? These worries, John can cope with. He’s a father and a sheriff, he’s got that shit locked down. But this… oh, this.

It’s been going on a while. Since that whole – Jesus, whatever it was. The serial killer/alpha pack showdown that resulted in John and Melissa and Chris Argent getting tied up in a giant root cellar and almost dying. Stiles hasn’t been right since. A little insomnia, a nightmare or two – John could brush that off as the inevitable result of trauma and a not insignificant knock to the head when Stiles crashed his jeep. But it didn’t stop there.

He shows his list to Melissa, and it’s nothing, really: a few, stark words written in a notebook. But those words represent a Stiles who is increasingly anxious and disconnected, not sleeping, not eating properly. John’s son is starting to lose touch with reality. John knows that’s what’s happening because he’s seen it before. He’s seen it before.

He goes into Stiles’ room after he talks to Melissa, runs a hand up Stiles’ arm. He still feels cold. Better than when he arrived in the hospital, though. Stiles is awake, eyes fluttering open to look at John, and John squeezes his hand.

“Melissa says the doctor’s going to arrange an MRI,” he says, and he’s going to explain further, but Stiles nods.

“I figured,” he says, voice rusty, and his hand clutches back at John’s.

It’s funny. Looking down at Stiles’ hand, John remembers a child’s hand, small and smooth. Stiles is almost a man now, with a man’s hands. He reaches up, and smoothes back his son’s hair, and says, “Sleep now, kiddo. I’ll be right here.”

Stiles doesn’t close his eyes. “Is it the same?” he asks. “Do you think? I mean, I think it’s the same, right?”

And what can John say to that? How can he cope with the idea that his son, his beautiful, clever boy, might have a degenerative brain disease?

“Sleep,” he says firmly, and watches as Stiles’ eyes slide closed. He looks so fragile.

John wishes he didn’t have to worry. He wishes things were different.

o

The technician runs the MRI; points out atrophied tissue that is too familiar, and John wishes things were different.

But they’re not.


End file.
